


Duty and Pride

by Makioka



Category: Gladiator (2000)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Implied Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:20:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makioka/pseuds/Makioka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucilla has always known what Commodus is, and she has never been willing to pay the price of controlling him. A decision she may come to regret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duty and Pride

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScratchyWilson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScratchyWilson/gifts).



> A happy Yuletide to you! 
> 
> Note: Rather than attempt to fix the historical timeline of the film, I've kept it in-universe compliant.

Lucilla has never been accustomed to ask help from anyone. It is not merely pride that dictates this, but she rarely encounters anything or anyone that she cannot subvert into her service. She is her father's child. He tells her this when she is brought to him as a child,- when he comes home from battle, when he rises from his studying. He traces her face, to aid his failing eyes, tells her she is like a drawn sword unwilling to be sheathed. That if she were a man, he would have used her like a whip on the Senate, let them bow the knee to her. 

 

As it is in her own way she wields her power. In this she is Marcus Aurelius’s daughter. She holds power within her hands, not merely of name, but of understanding. She knows the Senators, she knows their sordid affairs, their shameful secrets. She is no mere decoration, no bride to be auctioned, she is her father’s hand, and her brother’s protector.

 

She holds power with arrogance that cannot be taught; that is bone deep and blood thick within her. When she was young, she had a slave whipped to death for an offence too trivial to mention, and never had one whipped again. To hold life and death within her hands, though not on a battlefield is to be the offspring of her father. The other slaves cringed, waiting every day for the mark of her displeasure and the resumption of the punishment, and every day it did not come grown bolder, and yet still restrained by memory, by the fear of what she has done in the past.

 

Lucilla bends for Commodus a little, but never too far. She remembers the wet liquid breaths of Commodus beside her as she gave the order for the punishment of her slave, the slow long shiver that wound through his body, and she does not want to hear them again. He came to her for the first time that night. Talked of when he would be Emperor, and she would rule at his side. She did not shush him like she should have. Let him talk out, until drowsy he dropped into sleep, and she lay silent and stared deep into the night, and made her plans.

 

Commodus traces her skin with slow soft fingers, over her face and over her neck, tracing the bones which are so like his beneath the skin. Sometimes he slides in close, long body warm beside hers, the face that she sees looking back in the mirror each day. "Sister," he says. "Artemis."

 

He calls her by many names, most of them not her own, and over and over he names her sister. In their native tongue, in Greek, in Gaulish -- or so he tells her. In the sharp harsh words of the native tribes that will be his own some day he croons. Threading through them are stories, and she wonders, with a sick swooping sensation in her stomach, whether she can hold her father to blame for this. Buy your son a Greek slave and let him listen, let him imbibe their cant and their stories, let them teach him false philosophy, the art of sophistry so easy to learn and so difficult to master.

 

But he is master of nothing, not even himself. He cannot threaten her, cannot frighten her, he is her little brother, and he holds no fear for her, not the powerless puppet that he is, that is all he will let himself reach for. She lets herself mourn for what he might have been, and prays that her father holds the throne for many many years to come. She knows that even puppets may have power if the right strings are pulled.

 

She toys with exercising the restraint on him that she has, but always remembers that if she uses the privileges, she must have a care for the duties and responsibilities. They both know that, their father tells them this. There are no rights without strength and duty. You cannot be Emperor -- or at least not for long -- if you will not abide by both. This they learn at Marcus Aurelius’s knee, and he illustrates it for them with long ago battles and stories. Some nights it is the Iliad, the foolishness of a man who threw his duties aware carelessly, then the Aeneid and the virtue he plucks from its pages of what Aeneas did for his people.

 

Of all he tells them though, for Lucilla the story that will not leave her is the story of Meleager who, when offered gifts and rewards for his actions, refused and, when all was despair, saved the army and was gifted nothing for his actions. The wise Phoenix cautioned Achilles to accept due gifts and not hold anger, lest he be devalued later. She turns this idea over in her heart and vows to learn from it

 

Lucilla is thankful when their father takes them with him on his travels, even though the journey is cold enough and tiring enough that she wishes it were long over. She sees the world from a horse or a litter as the day changes, and her father proudly makes use of her diplomacy and her tact. She feels valued and needed, and Commodus gains from it as well. He is after all the heir of Marcus Aurelius and in his hands, the empire that blossomed under the Emperor’s sure firm touch will one day rest. Lucilla dares to hope that this will mean something to him.

 

This is when they meet Maximus. He is tall and broad and everything Commodus is not. He overpowers them with his strength, his guilelessness all of them but Lucilla. She has experience in this, experience in escaping the pull of those who would take your heart and hold it. She watches as Maximus ducks his head in greeting to their father, watches his broad gestures back toward them, and prepares herself to meet an introduction that does not arrive.

 

Her father explains the situation to her that night, while Commodus drunk on too much wine reclines on his couch and snoozes. He tells her many things, uses the hard won fruit brought here at such cost and expense, to illustrate the battle that will be fought, then tilts his head on one side. "I must introduce you to Maximus," he says thoughtfully. "You will meet many men here, but few I trust so much as him."

 

She glances at him, puzzled. Marcus Aurelius knows about trust and loyalty, knows how hard they are to obtain, how little you can trust that anyone will render unto you completely. To hear him speak, this Maximus has the privilege of a trust that few others have. To her surprise, jealousy leaps in her throat. So long she has been her father's prop, her brother's shield, and she had flattered herself that he saw it the same way. He watches her stiffen, and runs a hand down the dark weight of her hair. "Not so much as you, daughter. No-one so much as you."

 

She is pacified by the words, mollified for the moment, and Maximus is a forgotten sting to her pride. Her father tells her how important such men are. His eyes are alight when he describes their qualities. How once they have pledged themselves to you, they are rock-solid, immutable and unchangeable. _I do not want any to die for me,_ he says, _but I would like them to live in such a way as I can be honoured by._

 

Commodus wakes then, eyes gleaming in the firelight as he watches them both. "I have honour, Father," he says drowsily. "I will make the city of Rome great . . ." And in the darkness, in the deceiving darkness, Lucilla could almost believe him. She sees the hardly-veiled pity in her father's eyes as he crosses to caress Commodus, to brush back the dark curls from his face.

 

"I believe you, my son," he says in a whisper, and Lucilla is reminded once again that her father is warrior, philosopher, thinker and emperor all in one, and he is a liar as well even if his tongue would call it fair words like diplomacy. Commodus's eyes slip closed again, but Lucilla suddenly does not trust his smooth face and his deathly silence. Even as a child Commodus had listened at doors, soaking in all he wanted and needed to know, enjoying the secrecy of it all. He did not care, did not differentiate, between the idle conversation of the cook and the state matters of which his father talked. Now she fears that he hides and plays with thoughts that he should not be privy to.

 

She mistrusts the look that Commodus gives them both, so innocent and unjaded when already her own heart is becoming icy, and her father mistrust it as well, demands that Commodus stay by his side for the next day, and learns the basics of understanding resupplying. There is an arrogance to him that does not bode well, and Lucilla shivers from more than the cool air.

 

Back in the heat of Rome, she tries not to forget what she saw, redoubles her efforts to the best of her ability, and becomes renowned for her elegant frugal parties. Frugality her father had told her, was the mark of a true Emperor. After all had not the divvus Augustus himself slept so simply on a hard bed? She bears this in mind, but when she marries, it is not for love, for money, nor is it just for power. It’s for the simplicity and honestness her husband can offer her, and all those around him, a balm to the clinging corrupt atmosphere that was beginning to spring up round the palace as Commodus stepped into his father’s shoes, and brought the new ways.

 

On the day she feels the child leap in her womb, she is struck by a terrible fear for it, unlike any she has encountered before, and she must force it aside to ponder the cause. For the first time she knows fear. She would feel known for herself, nor for her father, but when Commodus looks at her son with eyes too hungry and wild, like he is planning on ripping him apart for a meal, she feels the first icy trickles of it. Carefully she teaches her son, will not let him be separated for her. When her father dies, she wants to be ready after all. Lucius is young, but so have been many commanders, and she hopes with each passing day that they have more time- for Lucius to grow, and for Lucilla to plan.


End file.
